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Various costs and benefits are incurred while performing winter maintenance operations. However, a summary of these costs and benefits for different maintenance scenarios has not been compiled to date. This report summarizes past work that documented the quantified and non-quantified costs and benefits of three different winter maintenance strategies of interest; use of abrasives, salts and other chemicals in solid and liquid forms, and snow plows. Basic strategies were defined as plowing and use of abrasives, intermediate strategies were defined as the use of rock salt and salt brine (NaCl), and advanced strategies were defined as the use of corrosion inhibitors, inhibited salt brine, magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, and blended products. These approaches employ different components, both in terms of equipment as well as materials. Some components of the various strategies have better cost and benefit information available than others. This is particularly true of sanding/abrasives and salting. Other, more recently developed and employed approaches and materials have more limited cost and benefit information published. There are also a number of different environmental impacts associated with different components of each maintenance strategy. Using information gained from the literature review, surveys, and interviews summary benefit-cost matrices were developed for various winter maintenance strategies. Information and data gap analysis has aided in identification of areas for recommended research. This document is intended for use by transportation agencies, such as by maintenance supervisors, to aid in the decision making process in terms of the selection of winter maintenance strategies used to achieve a prescribed LOS.

Extremely cold winter storms (below about 10°F) bring about different considerations for taking care of roads than warmer winter storms, where granular salt and salt brine are cost-effective measures of melting snow and ice when used in combination with other operations (e.g., plowing). At temperatures lower than about 10°F, either extremely large quantities of salt are needed or no amount of salt can melt snow or ice pack. Best practices for using chemicals during extremely cold winter storms include: waiting until the end of the storm, using deicers in daylight hours only, mixing salt with MgCl2, CaCl2, and/or agriculture by-products, and using high application rates. Despite their environmental and hidden costs (air pollution, sedimentation, spring cleanup & disposal), abrasives are frequently used during extreme temperatures to provide temporary traction. Best practices for using abrasives during severe cold includes prewetting with liquid deicers (although not plain salt brine-it may freeze) or hot water. Innovative strategies continue to be tested at severe temperatures, including conductive pavements and geothermal systems, which have demonstrated to be potentially effective tools.

The operators and maintainers of highway networks are facing increasing demands and customer expectations regarding mobility and transportation safety during inclement weather, while confronting budget and staffing constraints and environmental challenges related to chemical and material usage. It is desirable to use the most recent advances and best practices to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of winter operations, optimize material usage, and reduce annual spending, corrosion and environmental impacts. Determining the benefits and costs of various winter maintenance practices, equipment and operations is a difficult and time consuming proposal for winter maintenance managers. This project enhanced and expanded a toolkit that was previously developed to facilitate benefit-cost analysis for winter maintenance. The toolkit items included comparing flexible blades to traditional blades, prewetting at the spreader, spreader calibration, slurries, tow plows, contracted truck (private or municipal) versus a state-owned truck, open versus closed loop spreader controls, remote cameras for monitoring remote sites locations, laser guides, and tailgate versus hopper spreaders. The toolkit is a website which receives parameter inputs from a user and generates a benefit-cost ratio for the item of interest